


loss

by skai_heda



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Childhood Friends, Clarke Griffin needs a hug, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Heavy Angst, Short One Shot, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:42:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22208071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skai_heda/pseuds/skai_heda
Summary: It stings, deep in the crevices of the worthless thing that keeps her alive. It aches and pounds against the inside of her head, but she cannot bring herself to hate him, to hate him for not loving her the way she loves him.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26





	loss

**Author's Note:**

> i'm so sorry this is literally a mess because i'm a mess because this fic is modeled after a situation im experiencing RIGHT NOW YAY and basically what happened to me two hours ago but you know read and find out i guess ah haha

At thirteen years old, Clarke's got a lot going on. But she's smart enough to know that none of it will matter when she gets older. A child's apocalypse is an adult's afterthought.

But she's determined to not forget everything. She's got a solid philosophy to grab the best memories and run.

* * *

At first, she's not totally sold on being enrolled in Taekwondo, but she finds that she has substantial talent in that department, so naturally it becomes one of her favorite things to do. And then she meets Bellamy Blake at the school, who's got an answer for everything and sharp eyes to match. He's fourteen, only a year older than her, but he seems so much older to her, through her childish eyes. They argue all the time, but she takes a liking to him immediately—he's exactly the type of friend she would've liked to have. They don't go to the same school—she doesn't think they ever will—but the thing that ties them together is strong, stronger than only being able to see each other twice a week.

* * *

Inevitably, they grow up. They grow up into two vastly different people, yet people that love and understand each other. Bellamy Blake becomes solid, irreplaceable, a vital organ. He is her best friend—she is his. There's no question, no more, no less.

* * *

Falling in love with him was not the plan. It had never been.

* * *

It's relatively simple, at first. He likes her, she likes him. At the precise moment they admit it to each other, they are standing barefoot on concrete, ice cubes starting to melt in his curls. An odd parody of a snowball fight in the middle of June, but with ice cubes instead of snow. At that moment, they are unaware of how much more exists between them.

"I like you too," Clarke says.

He nods with a bit of a sheepish grin, a piece of ice falling out of his hair. "Cool."

"Cool," she replies, grinning.

* * *

Bellamy Blake is an immensely complex person. Behind his smile there's grief, and pain, and anger, and the type of experience that Clarke has, too. They had understood each other before—and they understand each other now. He's a sad soul stuck in a happy body, so Clarke pours all of her love and her caring and her effort into him, does all she can to make him realize, to make him understand that he's not alone, that he is loved, always.

* * *

Something changes, inexplicable, untraceable. It is not the same. It never is.

* * *

The longer she goes without speaking to him, the more she starts to lose her grip on the carefully organized set of thoughts and memories pertaining to Bellamy Blake. She works hours and hours, exhausts herself to the point of not being able to think about anything except the tests and quizzes coming up in the next week. 

Yet she dreams of him, sometimes, then a lot of times. Her mind provides with the ghost of a touch on her hand when she wakes, taunts her in dreams with what she had lost in real life. Her best friend, and later, one of the best things to happen to her. It should have made her bitter, this instance of giving her all and receiving nothing in return. It stings, deep in the crevices of the worthless thing that keeps her alive. It aches and pounds against the inside of her head, but she cannot bring herself to hate him, to hate him for not loving her the way she loves him. The way she loved him. The way she still does.

* * *

She's not an unhappy person, necessarily. 

_Take the good memories and run._

And she tries, she really does—she takes and she takes. She takes the memory of Bellamy keeling over whenever she kicked him in the backs of his knees. She takes all of his jokes, stupid as some of them were. Him sitting beside her, laughing about something she wishes she could recall. Him touching her hair, telling her how much he loves the softness of it then laughing at his improvised monologue. But sometimes she can't tell the difference between a dream and a memory—his head on her shoulder as he complained about being sleepy, him resting his chin on her shoulder as he reads something over her shoulder. Their hands lacing together, a smile, a laugh. They had never kissed—this at least provides some sort of landmark in the journey of piecing together reality.

* * *

She lives, and she laughs, she achieves, she impresses, she loves. She does not forget him, of course not.

"You'll find someone else. Whenever you want to," her best friends say. "Whenever you're ready. You'll find someone else."

She lies on the mats in the martial arts center, the sun shining through her closed eyes. Maybe a dream, despite the warmth she feels on her face. But for now it is real, feels real to her. She opens her eyes and rolls over to face Bellamy, who is sitting beside her with his legs crossed. He turns his head and gazes upon her with this look in her eyes that warms her now but leaves her with a terrible aching emptiness when she inevitably wakes up. A lazy grin stretches across his face, and he is so substantial, so real in that moment that she breathes easier than she has in months. And yet a single thought, a fragment of reality pierces through the paper-thin walls of her dreams. She remembers these words, thinks them to herself in her spare moments of free time, whispers it into the darkness in that state she lies suspended between sleeping and waking.

_I wanted it to be you._


End file.
